updated 07:55 am EST, Mon January 10, 2011

Motorola Xoom shipments to hit 800K in Q1

Motorola should ship between 700,000 to 800,000 Xoom tablets in its launch window, part suppliers said on Monday. The Android 3.0 tablet would would reach the figure between its February launch window and the end of March. As many as one million could ship if demand is high enough, Digitimes heard, and there could be four different color schemes.

The same tipsters added that Android 3.0 had a fairly narrow range of support and worked best on seven- to 10-inch screens; it's believed it needs a minimum 720p (1280x720) screen to work.

The Xoom figures wouldn't include any sales in January but suggest relatively modest expectations for the launch, which might only be in the US at first. Samsung expected to deliver 1.5 million Galaxy Tabs in the fall, and Apple is widely estimated to be shipping anywhere between five million to seven million iPads in the same span. Google has usually relied on the sheer volume of manufacturers to get its smartphone market share up and may need similar support to have an effect on Apple's dominance of the tablet arena.

Along with the Xoom, Motorola was also said to be finally returning to shipping more than 10 million phones in 2011. Only some of this would come from basic feature phones, three to four of which would ship in 2011, while the rest would focus on both high-end Android smartphones like the Atrix 4G and lower-end devices such as the Flipside.

Reflecting possible future market share, Motorola would be joined by Sony Ericsson in its bounce back, but neither LG nor Nokia were expected by insiders to see "significant" improvements in shipments this year. Nokia was dropping in share for virtually all of 2010 and may not regain its stance until MeeGo phones or future Symbian revamps modernize its devices.

"May move..." is rather vague term.

It seems like a decent tablet, but how is it going to be distributed to consumers? Motorola only does things halfway by quickly losing focus. Are they going to sell these tablets through carriers or places like Best Buy? I hope they do a better job with the Xoom than Samsung did selling the Galaxy Tab.

I like that Atrix smartphone family of accessories. That's a fairly novel idea, but since the movies were choppy in youtube in full-windowed mode, I think it's pretty careless to offer something like that. I wouldn't consider that a good user experience at all. Any fairly good amount of devices that Motorola can manage to sell will definitely help their company, but they're not even a close match to what Apple can deliver. As far as tablets are concerned Motorola is just going to be fighting for second place or third place.

Here we go!!

Just like the many variants of Android phones now comes the onslaught of tablets :P
Back in the day I would say great for the consumer but judging from amount were all being subjected too, I think a lot of us are going to get shafted :P

Which Winter?

Oh, come on

Three posts and not one saying "OK, so how many trucks will Motorola need to move all those tablets? And which of their warehouses are they moving them too?" Add in a "Man, if they're going to be moving them this winter, hope they get those nimrods on Ice Road Truckers!"

Or perhaps a "Are they moving that much in Winter because they slide on ice really nicely?"